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Sparkle (6)
I am medically uninsurable.
I know this because two different companies -- CareFirst and Aetna -- have declared it so in the past two weeks.
Let me tell you what medically uninsurable looks like.
I am 39 year old mother of two. I am overweight, but not obese. I am an Irish Dance teacher. I am a student of Muay Thai kickboxing. I exercise at least 5 times a week. I can do 75 push-ups. I can do 200 sit-ups in a row without a break. I can knock over a heavy bag with a push kick. I eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, protein and fiber. I have a weakness for Starbucks Chai and pasta. I am on low dose medication for hypertension. I haven't been sick with anything other than colds for several years. Last fall, I herniated two discs in my neck, but after physical therapy and acupuncture, my neck is now fine. I have no symptoms. I can kickbox and dance. In August, I sprained my ankle on an elliptical when I was on vacation at the beach. I went to the doctor twice. He advised I wear the AirCast I already owned, rest it, ice it, and take Motrin. I went back a few weeks later and got a cortisone shot. Now my ankle is fine.
I am medically uninsurable because I went to the doctor for my sprained ankle, Aetna tells me. "But the ankle is fine now," I say. "I danced four Irish dance shows in one weekend on this ankle. I can send you the video." "You went to the doctor," Aetna tells me. It doesn't matter to them that the injury is healed. What matters to them is that I went to the doctor in the month before I applied for health insurance. "I can go back to the doctor and have him certify that it is fine. He can write it in the records." "Don't do that," Aetna tells me, "because then you've gone to the doctor again. That counts as treatment."
Don't go to the doctor if you want health insurance. Don't even go the doctor to have him certify that you are healthy if you want health insurance.
CareFirst won't insure me either because of the disc injury last year and, yes, the completely healed ankle sprain.
That was the most ill-advised 30 minutes I have ever spent on an elliptical.
If my husband and I were part of a group, none of this would be an issue, but we're not part of a group because our employers won't provide benefits. We're in this impossible situation of trying to find individual health insurance for our family because my husband's employer refuses to provide health care benefits. We're in this impossible situation of trying to find individual health insurance for our family because my employer, a community college, won't provide health care benefits to part-time faculty.
Who says the system isn't broken?
In the spring of 2009, my husband's full-time job (with great benefits) was cut from 5 days a week to 3 days a week, and his pay was cut almost in half. The majority of his department was laid off. There was no advance notice of this downsizing. My husband is pretty much our sole support. I work part-time teaching college English, but it's hardly a living. Losing half of my husband's salary meant we were in very real danger of losing everything, including our house.
In less than 2 months, he found a new job -- his current job. It looked like a lucky break. They matched his full-time salary. It was close to home. We wouldn't have to move in with my mother and default on our mortgage, but there was one problem. The new company didn't have a health insurance plan. We hesitated; we couldn't possibly have our main breadwinner in a job that didn't have health benefits. "We don't have benefits yet, but we're working on it," the company told my husband, so we took the job because we were in that desperate of a situation. We chose to believe they would offer benefits because they said they would. We really didn't have another choice.
Our COBRA premium from the downsized job was $1800/month, but we qualified for Obama's Cobra Subsidy plan (thank you, Obama) which brought our COBRA payments down to $690/month. We were just able to pay those. Just.
And we waited for health insurance benefits from my husband's company that never came. Why? We have no idea. Things just went from working
